Enterprise developers and architects beware: OAuth is not the double rainbow it is made out to be. It can be a foundational technology for your applications, but only if you’re aware of the risks.

OAuth has been silently growing as the favored mechanism for cross-site authentication in the Web 2.0 world. The ability to leverage a single set of credentials across a variety of sites reduces the number of username/password combinations a user must remember. It also inherently provides for a granular authorization scheme.

Google’s announcement that it now offers OAuth support for Google Apps APIs was widely mentioned this week including Mashable’s declaration that Google’s adoption implies all applications must follow suit. Now. Stop reading, get to it. It was made out to sound like that much of an imperative.

Google’s argument that OAuth is more secure than the ClientLogin model was a bit of a stretch considering the primary use of OAuth at this time is to integrate Web 2.0 and social networking sites – all of which rely upon a simple username/password model for authentication. True, it’s safer than sharing passwords across sites, but the security of data can still be compromised by a single username/password pair.

OAUTH on the WEB RELIES on a CLIENT-LOGIN MODEL

The premise of OAuth is that the credentials of another site are used for authentication but not shared or divulged. Authorization for actions and access to data are determined by the user on a app by app basis. Anyone familiar with SAML and assertions or Kerberos will recognize strong similarities in the documentation and underlying OAuth protocol. Similar to SAML and Kerberos, OAuth tokens - like SAML assertions or Kerberos tickets - can be set to expire, which is one of the core reasons Google claims it is “more” secure than the ClientLogin model.

OAuth has been a boon to Web 2.0 and increased user interaction across sites because it makes the process of authenticating and managing access to a site simple for users. Users can choose a single site to be the authoritative source of identity across the web and leverage it at any site that supports OAuth and the site they’ve chosen (usually a major brand like Facebook or Google or Twitter). That means every other site they use that requires authentication is likely using one central location to store their credentials and identifying data.

One central location that, ultimately, requires a username and a password for authentication.

Yes, ultimately, OAuth is relying on the security of the same ClientLogin model it claims is less secure than OAuth. Which means OAuth is not more secure than the traditional model because any security mechanism is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. In other words, it is quite possible that a user’s entire Internet identity is riding on one username and password at one site. If that doesn’t scare you, it should. Especially if that user is your mom or child and they haven’t quite got the hang of secure passwords or manually change their passwords on a regular basis.

When all your base are protected by a single username and password, all your base are eventually belong to someone else.

Now, as far as the claim that the ability to expire tokens makes OAuth more secure, I’m not buying it. There is nothing in the ClientLogin model that disallows expiration of credentials. Nothing. It’s not inherently a part of the model, but it’s not disallowed in any way. Developers can and probably should include an expiration of credentials in any site but they generally don’t unless they’re developing for the enterprise because organizational security policies require it. Neither OAuth nor the ClientLogin model are more secure because the ability exists to expire credentials. Argue that the use of a nonce makes OAuth less susceptible to replay attacks and I’ll agree. Argue that OAuth’s use of tokens makes it less susceptible to spying-based attacks and I’ll agree. Argue that expiring tokens is the basis for OAuth’s superior security model and I’ll shake my head.

SECURITY through DISTRIBUTED OBSCURITY

The trick with OAuth is that the security is inherently contained within the distributed, hidden nature of the credentials. A single site might leverage two, three, or more external authoritative sources (OAuth providers) to authenticate users and authorize access. It is impossible to tell which site a user might have designated as its primary authoritative source at any other site, and it is not necessarily (though it is likely, users are creatures of habit) the case that the user always designates the same authoritative source across external sites. Thus, the security of a given site relying on OAuth for authorization distributes the responsibility for security of credentials to the external, authorizing site. Neat trick, isn’t it? Exclusively using OAuth effectively surrounds a site with an SEP field. It’s Somebody Else’s Problem if a user’s credentials are compromised or permissions are changed because the responsibility for securing that information lies with some other site.You are effectively abrogating responsibility and thus control. You can’t enforce policy on any data you don’t control.

The distributed, user-choice aspect of OAuth obscures the authoritative source of those credentials, making it more difficult to determine which site should be attacked to gain access. It’s security through distributed obscurity, hiding the credential store “somewhere” on the web.

CAVEAT AEDIFICATOR

That probably comes as a shock at this point, but honestly the point here is not to lambast OAuth as an authentication and authorization model. Google’s choice to allow OAuth and stop the sharing of passwords across sites is certainly laudable given that most users tend to use the same username and password across every site they access. OAuth has reduced the number of places in which that particular password is stored and therefore might be compromised. OAuth is scriptable, as Google pointed out, and while the username/password model is also scriptable doing so almost certainly violates about a hundred and fifty basic security precepts. Google is doing something to stop that, and for that they should be applauded.

OAuth can be a good choice for application authentication and authorization. It naturally carries with it a more granular permission (authorization) model that means developers don’t have to invent one from scratch. Leveraging granular permissions is certainly a good idea given the nature of APIs and applications today. OAuth is also a good way to integrate partners into your application ecosystem without requiring management of their identities on-site – allowing partners to identify their own OAuth provider as an authoritative source for your applications can reduce the complexity in supporting and maintaining their identities. But it isn’t more secure – at least not from an end-user perspective, especially when the authoritative source is not enforcing any kind of strict password and username policies. It is that end-user perspective that must be considered when deciding to leverage OAuth for an application that might have access to sensitive data. An application that has access to sensitive data should not rely on the security of a user’s Facebook/Twitter/<insert social site here> password. Users may internally create strong passwords because corporate policy forces them to. They don’t necessarily carry that practice into their “personal” world, so relying on them to do so would likely be a mistake.

Certainly an enterprise architect can make good use of Google’s support for OAuth if s/he is cautious: the authoritative source should be (a) under the control of IT and (b) integrated into an identity store back-end capable of enforcing organizational policies regarding authentication, i.e. password expirations and strengths. When developing applications using Google Apps and deciding to leverage OAuth, it behooves the developer to be very cautious about which third party sites/applications can be used for authentication and authorization, because the only real point of control regarding the sharing of that data is in the choices allowed, i.e. which OAuth providers are supported. Building out applications that leverage an OAuth foundation internally will enable single-sign on capabilities in a way that eliminates the need for more complex architecture. It also supports the notion of “as a service” that can be leveraged later when moving toward the “IT as a Service” goal.

OAuth is not necessarily “more” secure than the model upon which it ultimately relies, though it certainly is more elegant from an architectural and end-user perspective. The strength of an application’s security when using OAuth is relative to the strength of the authoritative source of authentication and authorization. Does OAuth have advantages over the traditional model, as put forth by Google in its blog? Yes. Absolutely. But security of any system is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain and with OAuth today that remains in most cases a username/password combination.

That ultimately means the strength or weakness of OAuth security remains firmly in the hands (literally) of the end-user. For enterprise developers that translates into a “Caveat aedificator” or in plain English, “Let the architect beware.”

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Lori MacVittie is responsible for education and evangelism of application services available across F5’s entire product suite. Her role includes authorship of technical materials and participation in a number of community-based forums and industry standards organizations, among other efforts. MacVittie has extensive programming experience as an application architect, as well as network and systems development and administration expertise. Prior to joining F5, MacVittie was an award-winning Senior Technology Editor at Network Computing Magazine, where she conducted product research and evaluation focused on integration with application and network architectures, and authored articles on a variety of topics aimed at IT professionals. Her most recent area of focus included SOA-related products and architectures. She holds a B.S. in Information and Computing Science from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Nova Southeastern University.

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